Alsa Village

Kyle scratched the back of his head when he suddenly felt a sting in his palms.

Looking at them, he could only sigh as droplets of blood dripped to the ground.

"I don't plan to abandon you! At least, not if you're working hard to help and improve yourself instead of acting like an angsty bunny."

Selene felt as if she was drowning and had received help at the last minute. As relief flooded her, she didn't even hesitate to kneel down as tears continued to trickle down her cheeks.

"I will listen to everything my master says… but don't abandon me... I plead with you...!"

Kyle didn't like the way the situation was turning out, but he could only sigh and hold Selene's arms to drag her up, forcing her to stand on her feet again.

"As already I said, I won't abandon you. Just work hard, and avoid a repeat of situations like before. I understand that it is hard for you but you don't have a choice. You will have to kill, mercilessly and without hesitation, otherwise, you will not only endanger yourself but also those you want to protect!"

Saying so, Kyle ended his lecture. While Selene continued to sob, he walked towards the boar tusk dagger and picked it up.

Turning around he saw that Selene wiped her tears away and was following him quietly, suppressing her sobs as she stared at him with eyes that were still glistening in tears.

When Kyle saw this, he knew that she had learned from her mistake and handed her the dagger.

Three days had passed since that incident, and both Kyle and Selene had improved a lot.

Selene's survival capabilities were higher than he had expected, but that was no surprise because she had managed to be alive despite getting beaten up and harassed almost every single day.

Additionally, he learned a few things about the Alsa Village which was the name of the settlement of the Aldras race.

The information was quite useful and Kyle got to know that Selene had been found and brought to the village when she was a little girl.

This helped him visualize her past more distinctively, which in turn, made him understand why she was afraid of him abandoning her.

Apparently, only humans and humanlike races were allowed to reside inside the Alsa Village while the Nasga were only accepted to stay for a short while to complete their trade as merchants.

Other than that, some of the Nasgas were treated even worse than some Lohars who were mostly accepted by the Aldras race.

Nevertheless, the Aldras race considered Lohars to be beneath them and only used them for manual labor or to satiate their desire.

To put it simply, Lohars were accepted as slaves, while Nasga weren't even allowed to stay inside the Alsa village for longer than a few hours.

They were seen as the harbinger of diseases and death, but Kyle could only shake his head at that.

Based on the information Selene had provided so far, he had an inkling of how things would turn out for them in the village. It wasn't going to be problematic if his guess was correct, yet weird if one were to look at the overall situation.

Even if the Alsa Village had an Aldras at the Vitae stage, that was still not enough for the villagers to sleep soundly at night.

The Aldra race had just been fortunate that the Sadorla forest was a perfect habitat and more advantageous for those cultivating with mana!

This allowed them to become slightly stronger than the rest.

They were able to fight against beasts at the Fortification stage, while solitary beasts at the Vitae stage were unable to simply charge up to the village and destroy it.

During the last three days, Kyle had started to impart basic weaponry lessons to Selene, including how to use the dagger and what she had to pay attention to when wielding it.

He was not a weapons specialist but from the knowledge he recalled about his past life, Kyle had been quite talented.

Hence, teaching the basics was not an issue for him. Fortunately, Selene was eager to learn as well.

Additionally, she was trying to circulate primordial energy through her body while walking around, but it seemed harder than expected.

Other than that, her pain seemed to increase if she did not cultivate carefully. Thus, Kyle forbade her from cultivating since the last few days, even if she had wanted to.

Kyle's situation was slightly different from Selene's which allowed him to cultivate passively.

He didn't have to actively absorb soul force like others had to absorb their respective energy because his Spirit Soul was responsible for this task!

Kyle's only task was to annex and merge with the soul force that nurtured Kyle's body and invigorated him.

Instead of using the energy he had accumulated to nurture his Spirit Soul or immediately improve Selene's condition which would allow her to absorb primordial energy right off the bat, Kyle decided to nurture himself up to a certain standard.

But before that, he decided to use half of what he annexed to nurture the Emerald fox first.

The number of beasts they could hunt was in the single-digit, and even then it was only one puny beast at the Initial Fortification stage that they had managed to spot and kill.

Kyle was unbothered by the beast's cultivation, and he simply devoured the beast's soul to feed his Spirit Soul, but Selene was of a different opinion.

According to her, she should have killed at least 10 beasts during the last three days to make up for the young forest deer that had escaped her.

He had to endure Selene's rant about herself that went on for several hours after hunting their first prey, but Kyle could only look at her ashen face with conflicted emotions.

'Is that how Selene is overcoming the trauma of killing a living being; by grumbling about how weak and useless she is?'

Everyone's perspective of their first kill and how they came to terms with the fact that they were responsible for a being's death was different.

In Selene's case, her first prey had been a hare that she had killed by piercing the boar tusk dagger through the large hare's neck, killing it in an instant.

Only a moment later, did she truly comprehend what had happened as warm blood sprayed on her face.

Feeling uneasy, she retched and gagged before puking a lot before her stomach wasn't left with anything to throw out.

Her face had been pale since then and he could only think that it would take a while for Selene's willpower to be strong enough to kill without hesitation and guilt of taking a life.

It was noon already when Kyle and Selene found the first trails that led them towards the Alsa village.

Thanks to the wooden sheet with information and Selene's good memory, they had no problems finding the village that had a population of around 500 Aldras villagers.

Upon nearing the entrance, Kyle was surprised to see that neither was the entrance well-hidden and disguised nor were there any guards stationed at the gate to prevent strangers or ferocious beasts from entering it.

As such, Kyle and Selene simply walked in through the entrance, and not a single soul paid them any attention whatsoever.

Finding and entering the village turned out to be much easier than Kyle had expected, and after the first hurdle was crossed, he began to investigate the entire village to see what kinds of auxiliary occupations it harbored.

They strolled for an entire hour through the village because Selene was as unfamiliar with the infrastructure as Kyle.

Kyle had expected this to be the case because Selene had been a slave all her life so she wouldn't know much about the Alsa village, to begin with.

Selene had mostly been subjected to gathering branches, herbs, and other things when she was young and too weak to do hard labor.

By the time she got old enough, merchant Zwark had already purchased her, and now Selene had come full circle by returning to the place where everything had begun.

However, she was not scared at all to revisit the village! Instead, Selene was eager to find out what her future would look like!

From the information Kyle had obtained, the Alsa village didn't have a shortage of food because almost everyone was able to hunt beasts at the Low-Fortification stage.

This was great because he wouldn't have to bother hunting beasts solely for the purpose of procuring food as he could purchase it instead!

And that was the point at which money came into play!

Kyle was not sure if there were any other villages around that were larger than the Alsa village, but this would come in handy because small villages mostly bartered instead of using a currency to purchase and sell goods.

With a population of more than 500, if one were to include the enslaved Lohars, it was not necessary for the villagers to use a currency because all of them could support each other to stay alive and receive mutual benefits.

However, this didn't seem to be the case! The villagers seemed to mind their own business, which was an interesting sight!

There was a small tavern in the center of the village, and as they neared it, Kyle could see prices written on a wooden board. Those prices included the lodging and food charges that one had to pay to live in the village.

However, that was not important.

What was more important was to figure out what kind of currency the Alsa village used and the most efficient way to procure it, as not even Selene could be certain of it.

But this mystery was solved when they entered the village's pharmacy to sell something they had found on the way to the village!